Displaced peoples, insecurity over food and sanitation, economic devastation, worsening community tensions: the Central African Republic is going through what must be the worst crisis in its history.

Both perpetrators and forms of violence change. States are no longer the central referents of contemporary conflicts. We can no longer understand them as the outcome of a linear history starting from tribal societies and leading to Western political structures.

The term “strategy” goes back to Greek antiquity and its meaning has evolved over time. Although today the term is bandied about and employed in all contexts, in the past, attempts to define it have been made by the greatest military thinkers.

Beginning in the 1970s, becoming solidified with the “peace dividends” in the 1990s and finally accelerated by the financial crisis of 2008, Europe’s demilitarization is undeniable.

The first wave of globalization in the 20^th century triggered deep upheaval of the organization of power and an overall depreciation of European nations.

The increasing militarism prior to the Great War had its roots in national beliefs and ideologies constructed during the 19^th century in European countries.

Germany’s responsibility in the two global conflicts reflects, among other things, the German military’s desire to free itself from political control and the depth to which the Wehrmacht was immersed into Nazi ideology and a Nazi state whose orders it never really contested.